COMMONWEALTH'S TAKE ON TRICK-OR-TREAT

SOURCE: Ripon Commonwealth-Press
Ripon Mayor Aaron Kramer says he may be going Trick-or-Treating as The Invisible Man this year. Even after issuing an order to move Ripon's Trick-or-Treating up one day - from Sunday to Saturday - he still can't please everyone. With the change, the annual sugar festival will take place on Halloween Day, and it no longer conflicts with Sunday's Packer-Viking game. The hours remain the same: 3 to 5 p.m. Still, Kramer hears rumblings of dissent.

"Right now it's running 50-50," he said Monday, hours after the decision was announced. "Some people think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Others think I'm the most evil mayor in Ripon history." Many Packer fans in Ripon breathed a sigh of relief when Ripon city leaders announced the Trick-or-Treat event would be moved up a day. This means costumed candy-lovers won't compete with the game to end all games: Green Bay Packers taking on Brett Favre at Lambeau Field, with kickoff at 3:15 p.m. Kramer said his reasoning was twofold: the game, and also because he's a traditionalist. "It should have been the 31st from the start," he said.

The new date puts Ripon's Trick-or-Treating on the same day as other local communities, which had planned for Saturday (Halloween Day) all along. When Ripon set the original Nov. 1 date for this year's Trick-or-Treat, the Packer-Viking game was scheduled for noon, meaning the game would have been over a good hour before the ending of Trick-or-Treat, allowing people to enjoy both. "I've been told that Ripon traditionally holds theirs on the Sunday nearest to Halloween, and it goes back to the 1970s ... That was the rationale I was told," Kramer said. But then the game time was moved to 3:15 p.m. - which placed it right in the middle of Trick-or-Treating. This created quite the buzz.

Now that the Trick-or-Treating has been moved to Saturday, it's still a catch-22, Kramer said. That's because although the Packer game is no longer a concern, some residents have other conflicts with Saturday, such as a possible Ripon Tiger football playoff game. "I have more people contacting me about Trick-or-Treating than Boca Grande, or the city budget, or rising taxes. It's frightening," Kramer said. "It's Trick-or-Treating. It's not like I moved Christmas," he added.